The Distillation

Consciousness can be studied using magnetoencephalogram (MEG) and electroencephalogram (EEG) techniques to measure neural signal diversity.... The authors found that among the psychedelic drugs tested, there was an increase in signal diversity in the psychedelic state compared to placebo. These results were supported by the questionnaire results.

The authors expected that three different psychedelic drugs (LSD, ketamine, and psilocybin) would produce greater signal diversity scores compared to normal consciousness levels. In order to assess this, they analyzed MEG recordings using specific signal diversity measures. Measurements were collected in healthy participants who were administered either a psychedelic drug or placebo intravenously. The participants were also asked to fill out a questionnaire to evaluate their psychedelic experiences.

Lisa Monteggia, professor of neuroscience at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, has studied how ketamine works to fight depression. Based on her own research, she thinks the trippy effects can be dissociated from the therapeutic ones. The right dose of the right compound, correctly timed, could "enable the design of treatment strategies against neuropsychiatric disorders without the unwanted side effects of these drugs," she tells me.

For example, there is ongoing research aimed at developing a drug that would have the same depression-lifting effect of ketamine, but without the out-of-body trip. (Success here would also have the financially convenient effect of creating products that—unlike existing psychedelics— could be patented.) Johnson & Johnson, Naurex, and AstraZeneca have all been testing such drugs... But many of the psychedelic researchers think this quest is unlikely to bear fruit: indeed, so far, ketamine-like compounds without trippy effects haven't reliably beaten placebo. This suggests that the emotional experience, its psychological content, and the way you make meaning out of the trip may really matter.

According to Johnson, depression and addiction both involve a narrowing of vision—a tunnel that it takes a profound experience to suck someone out of. Psilocybin, he says, can foster something called cross-talk between regions of the brain that don’t normally communicate. Cross-talk, in turn, is associated with novel ways of looking at problems.

They’re “dealing with stuff they haven’t dealt with in years or decades,” Johnson said. While tripping, “people reflect on their childhood, their parents, their siblings, all their relationships, their love life, their current relationships.” Meanwhile, their minds become a kaleidoscope: “Colors are brighter. The walls might be waving. There might be a halo around things,” he said...The hallucinators see the contents of their minds spread out before them, like dusty old knick-knacks brought up from the basement and strewn out in the front yard.

Today, the medicalisation of hallucinogens is once again on the rise. While this is an important and vital step in creating both an atmosphere of acceptance in the public mind and their utilisation in the psychiatric sphere, it should not be seen as an end in itself.

The central lesson of psychedelic literature is that, in LSD, you will find what you’re looking for; to have the outcomes dictated by a centralised medical dogma is to limit the potentiality of the drug and dictate the capacity of the individual to regard their own experiences as personal and non-pathological; to restrict their theatre of play.

Modern relationships are challenging for a whole range of reasons, and these reasons might be very different from one couple to the next. Drug-based treatments aren't always going to be the best approach, and sometimes they should even be avoided.

From the perspective of evolutionary biology, love is a complex neurobiological phenomenon that has been wired into us by the forces of evolution. It makes heavy use of the brain's reward systems, and its ability to bring together (and keep together) human beings--from prehistoric times until the present day--has played a major role in the survival of our species.

Q: How do you see the chances of drug policy reform in the global scale? Should we expect slow gradual changes or are we heading to revolutionary paradigm shift?

A: Change is happening, there is no question. The speed is glacial at times: the UN sands shift slowly, and progress is continuously stifled by the reliance on consensus-based decision making. But progress is being made nonetheless – the debates and rhetoric at the UN on drugs now is a world apart from a decade ago, as is the strength and acceptance of civil society participation. But the UN does not to “revolution”, it does slow “evolution”. Looking at it pragmatically, the revolution will happen at the national and local level – governments making brave decisions to better serve and protect their citizens. In some cases, as in the USA, Uruguay, Bolivia and Canada, this might be for one drug, in others, such as Portugal and the Czech Republic, this might be for all of them. But it is at this level that real change will happen, and then the global policy framework will follow – it will be left in a situation where it either needs to adapt and evolve, or wither and die.

From the Article: We Are On The Right Side Of History" - An Interview With Jamie BridgePublished by: Drogriporter.huOriginal Link :http://drogriporter.hu/en/jamieArtwork Fair Use:By JPS68 via photoshop - Scan book, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15115562

About 250 million people [3.33% of world population] used [illegal] drugs in 2015, the report says. Of them [using], 29.5 million [only 12%] had a drug use disorder, including addiction. (these statistics based of world population of 7.5 billion)

“Despite decades of global prohibition and tens of billions of dollars invested annually in anti-trafficking measures, governments have consistently failed in their attempts to eradicate or even suppress the market. “This report shows that the current global framework for tackling drugs has failed and that new approaches, such as decriminalisation of possession offences and regulation of the market, must be pursued.”

“This is not about providing free drugs,” said MacDonald. “It’s about providing better care and reducing the burden on society.” It costs the provincial government about C$27,000 a year to fund a Crosstown client, as opposed to an estimated C$48,000 spent a year on health, policing and judicial costs for those who are dependent on illicit opioids.

Clients visit the clinic two or three times a day. Each time they’re given heroin and sterile equipment and are supervised while they inject. Some continue to use heroin for a long time, but the clinic has so far seen at least 10% of its clients pull back on their drug use.... Fourteen years after Insite opened its doors, the idea is now catching on. The federal government last year approved a second safe injection site in Vancouver and in recent weeks has given the green light to services in Montreal, Toronto and Surrey... Interest has also been percolating south of the border; groups in Seattle, San Francisco and New York City, among others, are currently exploring the creation of similar facilities.

The road back is not an easy one, but it is clear enough. It begins by admitting that not every good idea is constitutional, nor is every bad idea unconstitutional. And while many people might well think that prohibiting drugs is a good idea, it is decidedly unconstitutional. There is no authority granted to the federal government to engage in this sort of behavior. In 2015, 591,000 Americans had a substance abuse disorder involving heroin, and 12,990 died from heroin overdoses. But to put the heroin problem in perspective, 15.7 million Americans have an alcohol abuse disorder, and alcohol abuse kills 88,000 Americans annually. The reason drug cartels exist at all is because of the U.S. government's “war on drugs,” which President Nixon declared in 1971. Since then, the United States has spent over $1 trillion fighting drugs. And for what? When the government prohibits things people want, like drugs, those things don't just disappear; they go underground. And when that happens, buyers and sellers no longer have access to legal protections of any kind, from simple police services to the courts for contract enforcement.

ECfES

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